With the rapid development of data services such as Internet, new requirements have been presented continuously on a transport network. The multi-services transport network enables the transition of the transport networks from the transport of predominant voice services to the transport of predominant data services plus voice services. Services supported over the transport network, typically referred to as a user side (or a branch side) include the Ethernet, the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and the Frame Relay, in addition to the Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH) which supports data services and the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) which supports voice services. Ethernet services are the most popular services among these emerging data services. A line side of the transport network includes the above SDH including a high-order channel layer (VC-4 or VC-3, where VC stands for Virtual Container) and a low-order channel layer (VC-12 or VC-11); Optical Digital Unit (ODU) switching and wavelength switching of the Optical Transport Network (OTN) which is wavelength-oriented downward; and Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) which is data-oriented upward. A transport node in the transport network includes one or more line-side ports, and a reliable transport from a plurality transport channels to a line is implemented through multiplexing and de-multiplexing. One or more branch units may be responsible for connection with a service signal at a client layer and one or more cross connection modules are responsible for establishing a cross connection between a branch interface and a line interface and between line interfaces, thereby implementing the establishment of an end-to-end network connection service. Origin and termination of the network connection service need to connect various user-side services to a network connection through an adaptor to accomplish a transport of a branch signal.
An existing mechanism of establishing an end-to-end connection for a network connection service generally includes the following steps regardless of establishing a Permanent Connection (PC) through a network management system or establishing a Soft Permanent Connection (SPC) over a control plane of an Automatic Switching Optical Network (ASON) of the ITU-T.
Firstly, a management plane selects the type and the number of network connections for user-side services and further selects an adaptation stack from the network connections to the user-side services.
Then, the management plane establishes cross connections with respective network nodes one by one to establish the network connections if the network connections are permanent or the network management system instructs the control plane to establish automatically the network connections if the network connections are soft permanent.
Finally, the management plane adapts the user-side services to the network connections for an ingress node and an egress node of the network.
As can be seen from above, the following drawbacks are present in the prior art. Manual configuration has to be required to adapt the user-side services to the network connections in the last step, and this may introduce a delay of establishing the network connections, and it may be difficult to track and remove a failure due to a configuration error in the case of a large number of services. Furthermore, the existing technology standard of establishing a Switched Connection (SC) via a User Network Interface (UNI) is only limited to an establishment of a simple connection over a transport network with a single switching capability, such as an end-to-end connection of VC-4/VC-3, but it may not be satisfactory for triggering an automatic establishment of the end-to-end service through a user network interface or network management system over a multi-service transport network integrated with a plurality of switching capabilities.